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The change we need: four ways to fix fcc.gov

The Bush administration is coming to an end, but the FCC web site is still …

Stuck in the Netscape era

As Ars Technica readers know, the blogosphere is now saturated with guesses as to who President-elect Barack Obama will select as the next chair of the Federal Communications Commission. And there's no shortage of input about what the FCC's priorities should be over the next several years: net neutrality, improving U.S. broadband penetration, fixing the Universal Service Fund—everybody's weighing in with free advice.

Here's mine: somebody's got to do something about the FCC's web site: www.fcc.gov.

Nota bene: the following should not be construed as a dig at the FCC's dedicated personnel, many of whom I have the pleasure of communicating with on a regular basis. Clearly an enormous amount of work has been put into the site. But this effort has not been accompanied by coordinated planning or design. That's the fault of management, not staff.

Remember the Internet in the Netscape 3 era? The FCC sure does

Let's face it, fcc.gov still looks like it was thrown together six weeks after Netscape went public over a decade ago. The result: the only people who can really access it are telecom lawyers, public interest groups with their autoforms, and wonks like me who have dedicated years to exploring its mysteries. The tens of thousands of Americans who want to intelligently participate in the FCC's many proceedings are almost instantly stymied by the Byzantine nature of the site. Except, of course, if they want to make an indecency complaint.

Clearly, the next FCC needs to blue pencil into its upcoming Congressional budget a request for funding for a serious overhaul of the portal. It's time to bring in a team of designers, database programmers, and scripting grunts to transfer its data to a good content management system. Short of that, here are four suggestions for making fcc.gov more usable and accessible.

1. Make it easier for the public to comment on proceedings

Want to comment on an important issue facing the FCC like net neutrality or product placement? No problem, just go to this link and upload a statement. Oops. You've already been stopped dead in your tracks by field one, right? Field one requires a number for the proceeding associated with the issue. You have no idea what this number is, and, absurdly, when you click the proceeding search link, it requires you to input a proceeding number to look up the proceeding!

Most people who, often for the first time, want to give the FCC some individual feedback on an issue don't know that every major subject has a docket number. For example, the docket number for net neutrality is 07-52. Without that, you can't use the FCC's comment page to file a comment. To be fair, the agency has thrown up a page of popular dockets with quick links, but it's hard to find, contains only about 20 of the Commission's proceedings (some of which have expired), and only allows you to send a brief statement.

Would it really be so difficult to attach a link to the main comment form that leads to a page that explains docket numbers and offers a wiki with all current dockets? The FCC should post a link to that form at the top of every proceeding- or order-related news release it publishes in pdf, word, or html. And fcc.gov should post that link prominently at its top left hand corner, right under the search form.

And speaking of which...

2. Make it easier to search for comments on proceedings

Maybe you've heard that Clear Channel or the FBI or some public interest group has filed something interesting with the FCC? Maybe you want to look up the latest comments on a hot proceeding? So you went to the Commission's search field on the top left of the site and entered the appropriate data, right?

Forget it, you're lost already. That search engine only ferrets out what the FCC publishes about its activities, not the comments and statements that the agency receives from interested parties. What you really want is here, safely hidden three links away from the main page. And if you try to search that engine for a proceeding—again, you need the docket number.

Good luck finding this on your own. At least it was updated this century

In the long run, the FCC needs to modernize its comment database. It needs to grab some open source program like Lucene and make the millions of PDFs stored in its tables searchable by text (or at least as many as possible). In the short run, it needs to add that same link mentioned in suggestion one—a wiki of dockets so people can make informed use of the right search form. And again, the site should link to the form from the top left of the main page, not three clicks inside.

Matthew Lasar
Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Emailmatthew.lasar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@matthewlasar